'Traditional' marriage has changed a lot

Pundits and politicians love to pontificate about strengthening traditional marriage. But as someone who has studied marriage forms and family life for more than three decades, I wonder how many of them have the faintest idea of what they're talking about.

I suppose they mean the "traditional" marriage of one man and one woman.

But through most of human history and in most cultures the most widely accepted tradition of marriage has been polygamy -- one man and multiple women. We're not just talking about exotic island cultures or lost tribes in the African jungle. Polygamy is the family form most often mentioned in the first five books of the Old Testament.

In some societies, traditional marriage meant one woman wedded to several men. In others, a woman could take another woman as a "female husband." In China and the Sudan, when two sets of parents wanted to forge closer family ties and no live spouse was available, one set sometimes married off a child to the "ghost" of a dead son or daughter of the other family. Among the Bella Coola and Kwakiutl native societies of the Pacific Northwest, two families who wished to become in-laws but didn't have two sets of marriageable children available for a match might even draw up a marriage contract between a son or daughter and a dog belonging to the desired in-laws. Most traditional marriages were concerned with property and wealth, not love or sex.

But what about the sanctity of marriage in the Christian tradition? It is true that Jesus, contradicting Moses, forbade his followers to divorce. But Jesus was not very keen on having them marry in the first place, holding that it was better to abandon worldly ties and dedicate oneself to building the faith. "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke, 14). The Apostle Paul thought that getting married was better than burning in hell for unmarried fornication, but that the truly good thing was to remain a virgin and devote oneself to spreading God's word.

For the first 16 centuries of its existence, the Catholic Church held that marriage was inherently tainted by what Pope Gregory the Great deemed the degrading "carnal pleasure" that took place under its auspices. In the church's hierarchy of worthy females, the virgin ranked highest, the widow second and the wife a distant third.

Nor did the early church establish elaborate rules about what made a marriage legitimate. One pope proposed that a marriage ought to take place in church to be valid. But his bishops pointed out that such a change would immediately render most of Europe's children illegitimate. So the church decided that a man and woman were married if they had exchanged "words of consent," even if they had done so out by the haystack, without any witnesses or involvement by a priest.

Not until 1215 did the Catholic Church make marriage a sacrament, and not until 1563 did it begin to enforce rules mandating that certain ceremonies had to be performed to make a marriage legitimate.

Sixteenth-century Protestant reformers had a much more positive attitude toward the blessedness of marriage than Catholics. But Protestant clerics were stricter than Catholics in enforcing the tradition that marriage should be governed by considerations of patriarchal authority and property rather than free choice based on love. In many Protestant regions, authorities forbade impoverished individuals from marrying at all. And Protestant officials often stepped in to dissolve marriages that had been made without parental consent, even if both parties were adult and children had already been born to their union.

It is also not "traditional" to insist that the state should have the final say over what constitutes a valid marriage. In the Roman tradition, which served as the basis for Western European law, the only difference between marriage and unmarried cohabitation was if the partners thought of themselves as married. It wasn't until 1754 that the English state required a license for a marriage to be valid. And even after that, "self-marriage" and "self-divorce" remained commonplace, especially in the early decades of the United States. In 1833, Pennsylvania's chief justice warned that a strict legal interpretation of rules governing marriage validity would render "the vast majority" of births in that state illegitimate.

Most of the "traditions" we associate with marriage are in fact comparatively new. It was only two centuries ago that people began to marry for love rather than for mercenary or practical considerations. Only 130 years ago did men start to lose their legal right to physically beat or imprison their wives. And only in the past 40 years have we established the principle that within a marriage wives and husbands have equal rights in decision-making.

Not until 1979 did the last American state finally repeal its "Head and Master" law, which had given husbands the final say over many aspects of family life. Not until 1993 did marital rape become a crime in every state, overturning the millennia-old tradition that a wife was obligated to have sex with her husband whenever he demanded it.

Many departures from "traditional" marriage have been for the good. But the same changes that have made marriages fairer and potentially more rewarding for both partners have made marriage more optional, requiring partners to negotiate more than in the past. The multiplication of new options, combined with the rapidity of changes in gender roles and social values has had destabilizing and sometimes troubling results for the organization of interpersonal obligations. Trying to revert to antiquated and unfair traditions is not the answer. We need to figure out how to build on the opportunities and minimize the risks associated with the ongoing modernization of marriage. It helps no one to wage futile culture wars to return to a tradition that wasn't half as clear-cut or advantageous as many people believe.

Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College and is the author of "Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage" (Viking Penguin).